SOUTH WAYNE – The Black Hawk School District draws from five small villages in eastern Lafayette County and western Green. Currently, there are just 101 students in the high school, and that is a number that has steadily lowered over the past 15 years.
During that same time, the girls basketball program rose to prominence, not just in southwest Wisconsin, but across the entire state.
When Michael Flanagan took over as head coach in 2006, the program had been struggling to finish above the middle of the conference in win-loss record. His brand of basketball basically not only helped change that, but the athletes themselves took the bull by the horns.
Since that time, Black Hawk – home of the Warriors – has seen a bevy of athletes come through the ranks. Three players went on to play NCAA Division I college basketball, with two of those athletes, Bailey Butler and Natalie Leuzinger, still playing. The pair helped bring home the first gold ball in program history in 2019, and finished No. 1 and 2 in career scoring at the high school.
“The teaching part of the game is what it is all about. Regardless of success, at the end of the day, I love teaching the game,” Flanagan said in 2021 when he announced he was stepping down as head coach. He finished with over 300 wins and seven trips to state in 15 seasons. “I always said that I was done, I wanted people to say that we made our kids better. Whether it’s Bailey Butler or a role player – we wanted to take those kids and help them reach their ceiling.”
Butler and Leuzinger went to state together three years in a row, from 2018-2020. They lost in the title game in 2018, won in 2019, then had the 2020 tournament canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Leuzinger graduated in 2020, and Butler came back for one more hurrah in South Wayne, leading Black Hawk back to the state tournament for a fourth straight year.
Butler, a sophomore with the UW-Green Bay Phoenix, was both the Freshman of the Year and Sixth Player of the Year in the Horizon League last season. The results came just one year after being named the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association’s Miss Basketball as a high school senior – the first Black Hawk athlete to receive such an honor. In her senior season of high school, she averaged 28.3 points, 8.2 rebounds, 7.9 assists and 6.2 steals per game. She shot 43.6% from beyond the arc and recorded a rare quadruple double.
This season with the Phoenix, she’s been in the starting lineup every game,
